Chemical analysis of surgical smoke by infrared laser spectroscopy

Abstract

The chemical composition of surgical smoke, a gaseous by-product of some surgical devices-lasers, drills, vessel sealing devices-is of great interest due to the many toxic components that have been found to date. For the first time, surgical smoke samples collected during routine keyhole surgery were analyzed with infrared laser spectroscopy. Traces (ppm range) of methane, ethane, ethylene, carbon monoxide and sevoflurane were detected in the samples which consisted mostly of carbon dioxide and water vapor. Except for the anaesthetic sevoflurane, none of the compounds were present at dangerous concentrations. Negative effects on the health of operation room personnel can be excluded for many toxic compounds found in earlier studies, since their concentrations are below recommended exposure limits.

The oxidation of bitumen witnessed in-situ by infrared spectroscopy

“…The majority of research is based on the analysis of either laboratory-aged bitumen or bitumen extracted from contact with aggregates, or laboratory-aged in the presence of inorganic material and extracted from it for analysis [5,7,9,11,14,22,36]. Typically the first evaluation point is chosen at 60 min.…”

“…Additional observation is made that the sulfoxide signal increases first before the carbonyl one. Previous exsitu measurements assumed that the increase of the intensity of both signals occurs starting from t 0 , and the majority of correlations between rheological response and FT-IR spectra are based on that assumption [36]. By examining the changes in the time differential spectra of the raw bitumen during the first 60 min of oxidation, we can clearly see that there is a time period during which the chemical changes cannot be observed in the so-called carbonyl and sulfoxide region with FT-IR-ATR (Fig.…”

Mid-infrared laser-spectroscopic sensing of chemical species

“…A further example of gas sensing concerns a medical application, namely the analysis of surgical smoke that is produced during minimal-invasive surgery with an electro-knife [17,18] . This study was done in collaboration with the University hospital in Zurich.…”

“…2 ). We recorded infrared spectra of the samples with a home-made broadly tunable DFG system [19] in our laboratory with the exception of CO recording which was performed with a diode-laser-based system [17] . The spectral analysis was then performed with a principal component analysis [20] .…”

Fundamentals of spectral detection

“…Online in situ gas analysis fi nds increasing application in such as combustion (Chao et al , 2012) and plasma diagnostics (R ö pcke et al , 2008), reaction rate measurements (Kasyutich et al , 2013), exhaust gas analysis (Yamamoto et al , 2011), explosives detection (Bauer et al , 2008), plant physiology (Hunsmann et al , 2008) and life sciences (Cristescu et al , 2008). Other challenges are clinical breath analysis (Risby and Tittel, 2010), medical diagnostics (Andreev et al , 2011;Brandstetter et al , 2013;Gianella and Sigrist, 2012;Svanberg, 2008) and the analysis of stable isotope ratios (Kerstel, 2004;Nelson et al , 2008;Tuzson et al , 2008). The need to meet environmental and legislative requirements has led to the development of commercial analysers (FLAIR, 2011) to measure a variety of gases based on near-and mid-infrared absorption spectroscopy (Werle et al , 2002.…”